Just Taking Care
by Quintessentia
Summary: I was just taking care of you..." Four different stories. Three different bonds. Brotherly love!ItachiSasuke, Chibi!SasuSaku, Friendship!NaruSaku, and Fluffy!SasuSaku again.


This is the result of being bored to tears before my sophomore year of high school starts, and being without my laptop x-cries-x. The only thing i've been doing in the past week is practicing for my piano recital, which gets old after playing the same song 15 times in one night. And I still have to wait for Sunday! x-growls and shakes fist-x

Anyway, I was bored and and my thoughts turned to SasuSaku, so within minutes I was attaked by this atrocity of a plot that kept biting at my ankle and wouldn't let go. So i fed it carrots and sat down to type this. It would have been up sooner but I don't have my laptop with me now, and my family members hogged the computer in the basement for three days.

Out of the goodness of my heart (and because i've had a rather lonely summer), i'm dedicating this random oneshot to my first friend here on fanfiction: xxforbiddenlove07xx. She gave me someone to write long boring emails too over the summer. So good luck to you in your studies for this year, being elected VP, and thanks for being so easy to talk too (and tolerant of my 20 questions fetish) :D.

Disclaimer: Um, I don't own Naruto because I can't draw manga to save my life and the story would sound suspiciously like bad fanfiction?

* * *

"Nii-san, watch me!"

"Sasuke-"

_Thud._

"Oof."

Little Uchiha Sasuke bit his lip, ignoring the throbbing in his newly twisted ankle.

_Uchiha's don't cry._

"Sasuke, you should be more careful." His big brother sighed long-sufferingly, "You're not ready for the shuriken jutsu yet, you are only six."

Sasuke pouted, his bottom lip sticking out at his aniki, "But nii-saaaan, _you_could do the shuriken jutsu at six."

Itachi growled silently in his head.

Clan pride. Be the best and only the best. Those were the cards their father was playing on the table in front of Sasuke.

"_Be like your brother. Make us as proud of you as we are of him."_

He'd be damned before he let his father and those decrepit old fools turn his baby brother into their clan puppet.

So help him God.

He hunched over and knelt down in front of Sasuke, "Get on ototo. It's late; Mother's making tomatoes with the onigiri tonight."

Sasuke smiled happily and clambered onto his brother's back, dreams of a big bowl of steaming tomatoes occupying his thoughts.

As he felt the warm tension of Sasuke's skinny arms hugging his neck, the quiet heir smirked to himself in resolve.

The clan would not taint Sasuke's soul the way they had his. He would fall, in the line of duty if the time came for it, to protect Sasuke from that darkness.

"Hey aniki," Sasuke spoke right above his ear with a blush tickling his cheeks, "Why do you always carry me home when I fall down?" The little boy frowned, "I'm not a baby anymore."

Itachi smiled a little, for a brief second. _You'll understand someday Sasuke._

"I'm just taking care of you little brother."

* * *

"There's Sasuke-kun!" A blonde schoolgirl squealed from her seat at a picnic table in the schoolyard.

"Ino-chan?" Her pink haired classmate's eyes got big. "What? Where?"

Ino shook her best friend's shoulder and pointed frantically at a nearly empty table at the edge of the swings.

"Sasuke-kun's so cool." Ino gushed in the quiet boy's direction, "He's the best in the class and his shuriken throwing is always perfect..." Her companion's babbling all but melted away as Sakura studied her isolated crush.

'_He's so lonely looking...'_

Her shy eyes traveled to the empty space in front of him, _'He didn't bring any lunch. Maybe I should...'_

She glanced to the bento box her mother had packed her that morning, and then back at Sasuke. Picking up her shiny red apple, she began walking away from Ino to her crush's table.

"Sakura-chan..." Ino trailed off when she saw that she was being ignored, and her eyes panned to the direction her playmate was headed, "Oi, Sakura. What are you _doing_? Sasuke-kun doesn't talk to girls! Sakura!"

Sakura didn't look back as she stopped beside Sasuke's seat, "Um, Sasuke-kun-"

"_What?"_

Sakura made a startled sound and dropped her gaze from the person in front of her, babbling embarrassedly, "Well you didn't bring any lunch, and I thought you might be hungry, and you were lonely and I didn't want you be sad and s-so-_here_." The eight year old ducked her head and thrust the apple forward, clasping her hands behind her back.

Sasuke eyed the apple suspiciously, "So, what's it to you?"

Sakura was caught by surprise. That wasn't what Sasuke-kun was supposed to say. Didn't he know she just wanted him not to be so lonely all the time? She pushed a finger to her bottom lip, cheeks crimson, "What's i-um, well, I-I..."

Suddenly her head lifted and her tongue peeked out, fingers split in a peace sign, her next words causing Sasuke to be so taken aback that he turned away and took a tiny bite of her bright red offering.

"Well, I was just taking care of you Sasuke-kun."

* * *

'_Right corridor, left corner, ninjutsu know-how.'_

'_Right corridor-'_

Feet that looked too small for a ten year old ninja in training raced down the academy hallway in pursuit of a perfect attendance record.

'_Left corner. Almost there-'_

Her knees were pumping too hard and her ninja sandals slap-slap-slapping too wildly to stop herself from the outstretched ankle of an older, much taller academy student sending her sprawling forward, textbooks going all different directions in front of her.

The bigger students snickered at her humiliating predicament, calling out, "So long, Forehead-_chan_!" as they scampered off to their afternoon classes. Her pink head drooped on her slumped shoulders for a moment, before she remembered the clock and scrambled to her feet in search of her precious schoolbooks.

'_There!'_

Weapons manual by the lockers, genjutsu guide by the water fountain...

'_Where's my history book?'_

She checked her book stack again, no history book.

Out of the blue (or was it neon orange, she wondered), her vision was filled with something very bright, very obnoxious (how redundant, she snorted) and very, well, _orange_.

"Is this yours?" A green history book with the name 'Haruno Sakura' and 'I heart Sasuke-kun' scribbled a few hundred times on the cover was shoved under her nose.

Slowly, she lifted her chin, eye twitching with complete and total disbelief; and came face to grin with Konoha's number one knuckledheaded class clown ninja, Uzumaki Naruto.

Perfect attendance record be damned, what was the _village idiot_ doing in front of her?

"_Naruto?"_

The blonde struck a pose frighteningly similar to that of a spandex wearing green beast, "Sakura-chan, dattebayo! I, the great Uzumaki Naruto have rescued your history book from- uh, Sakura-chan?" His smile turned sheepish as he began rubbing the back of his neck nervously, "Uh, did I give you the wrong book or something, cuz-"

Sakura shook her head furiously, trying to rattle her brain back into place after all the eye-popping _oraaaange-ness_.

"Uh, thanks a lot Naruto."

With a grin she swore would have split his face in half, he stuck his nose in her face and threw his arms around her neck, "Just taking care of ya, Sakura-chan!"

-

-

-

-

"Can I have a kiss?"

-

"_Die!!"_

* * *

Toes drifted just above the water of the shallow blue pond as a petite ninja swung her legs lightly back and forth over the water in the last vestiges of that day's sunlight. The evening grew steadily darker as the bright eyed twelve year old followed the paths of the ripples in the pond.

Another light pink blossom drifted lazily down to the water's surface as another weight found its way to the base of the branch above.

"What are you doing out this late? You should be resting for tomorrow's training session."

Sakura looked back at Sasuke, leaving him to notice that the sun had finally winked out, but her smile was really easy to see in the dark.

"I'm always out here at night, Sasuke-kun. It's so quiet when everything's dark and still." She looked up at the stars for a moment, "The moon's really bright tonight, isn't it Sasuke-kun?"

He glanced, "Hn."

She smiled again, and went back to dropping flowers in the lake, making Sasuke notice the trees they were surrounded by were all cherry blossoms. Idly, he snapped off a sprig of the pale flowers and studied it in his fingers.

Picking off the last blossoms of her branch, Sakura became aware of a dark stare from behind her. Shifting on the branch, she looked to see her crush still on the limb above her, and forgot for a moment which were his eyes and which were the night sky.

'_Sasuke-kun's eyes are sparkling...'_

The strange open light in his eyes did not leave as he bent down and slid the sprig of flowers into her outstretched palm. Their gaze didn't break until Sakura giggled and smiled at him, bright viridian dancing, "Are you a stalker Sasuke-kun?" turning back to the stretch of water before her she didn't catch the slight frown that passed his lips as he said flatly, "No."

She giggled again and resumed pinching the flowers off again, this time petal by petal. Sasuke studied her again briefly, before seemingly making up his mind about something.

Facial features relaxing in resolution, Sasuke leaned back into the trunk of the tree and contented himself with watching Sakura and her quiet 'flower pinching'.

It wasn't until nearly an hour of reclining and three bare branches later that Sasuke finished his answer to the question she had asked him.

"I was just taking care of you Sakura."

She smiled.

* * *

Well, there is the product of my unending boredom. Hope you liked it xxforbiddenlove07xx!

;)


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